January 26afternoon

Hastily arranged, that meeting. And over now. I just
left my father standing in my paternal grandmother's
driveway. Hastily, because we did not connect until
yesterday. I couldn't reach him the day before. That day
before was the day I stopped waiting for tax returns, the day
I decided to leave the Winnebago behind, the day I began
mapping out an itinerary of bus trips through Mexico.

I depart in forty-eight hours.

Sudden, yes. Surprised me. I hardly slept that night--
that night I gave myself to sleep on the idea. And the night
after, again, little sleep--the unfixed itinerary fluxing
through my thoughts. But yesterday I finalized the itinerary.
And last night I slept. And today--my dad.

"So you're about to be a traveling man," he said. He
said it actually three or four times. But really I am already
amid my trip. And then wistfully, "I wish I could have two
months to travel through Mexico." This he also repeated.
"But he deserves it," he explained to my grandmother. "He's
stayed away from all the commitments that keep most people
from doing it." And clearly then before me I saw The Sandra
Texts, scene one.

My father has always been supportive of my unorthodox
pursuits. A conversation once in his own driveway probably
made them possible. "Intelligent men learn from their own
mistakes, John," he uttered then gravely. "But it's a
brilliant man that learns from the mistakes of others." I had
just told him I was to propose marriage to Sandra. He did
not offer me congratulations. He offered me instead that
aphorism. I delayed my proposal by a year because of that
aphorism. The year of maturity that aphorism bought probably
forestalled early marriage, divorce, and a sheaf of lucrative
advertising copy. In return I was granted the fortune of a
tragic romance, The Sandra Texts which will be born from it,
and a freedom that allows me to idle myself in a cafe on this
Super Bowl Sunday and scribble my thoughts.

Roebury's. A chain bookstore-cafe that is suddenly
everywhere: Tucson. North county San Diego. Wichita. It's
quiet. A subdued jazz clarinet plays through some sound
apparati. Duke Ellington, I think. I came here hoping for an
Americano. It wasn't on the menu but the counterguy knew of
it and displaced me for a moment out of this state. Long
hair, goatee, an uninstructed knowledge of my simple but
unfamiliar drink and suddenly I stood in downtown California,
Le Café Riche.

At every turn that you defy convention you invite fear.
And so at every turn fear demands that you obey convention.
But convention is a trampled path, a path trampled by a herd,
a herd stampeding away from some innocuous shudder of
thunder. And the thunder is innocuous. For the thunder
means nothing. The stampeding calms not the fear anyway,
only excites it. Fall in with the herd and you spend your
life running from something you've been taught you should
fear, something you've never seen, something you cannot even
name, something that isn't there. There is nothing to fear.
The most difficult step to take though is that first step,
that step out of the herd. Once outside the herd you
understand. Look! you say. Look! Nothing to fear! Once
outside you see that you've been made a fool. You become
canny. You never forget that your fears were unfounded.
Forever after you see each fear as a liar and a thief. You
become ever-ready to challenge fear, sometimes even
belligerently so. Fear becomes to you a guide to where you
should go and what you should do, not the contrary.

I described this principle to my mother as I explained
to her surprised eyes my unexpected and imminent departure.
Fear poisons the soul, I told her. "Isn't there any
compromise?" she asked. And, "No," I answered. But I do not
seek fear. Seeking it is unnecessary. I'm no daredevil. I
simply define my objective, choose the best path toward it,
and then proceed regardless the obstacles. Always, without
exception, the most ominous of the obstacles dissipate before
me. The armies prove to be herds of swine. The dragons prove
to be windmills. Apparitions, they prove to be. Apparitions
of fear.

Fear was my guide when I decided to drive the Winnebago
through Mexico. There are hundreds of obstacles to such an
adventure. Hundreds of apparitions to face. Bandits in the
mountains of Veracruz and Puebla. Engine trouble and
mercenary mechanics. Corrupt officials at northern
checkpoints. All favorite apparitions. All false
apparitions. Because of them I determined to drive the
Winnebago. Then Thursday night came. As I sat in the
Winnebago over the Dhammapada of the Buddha a wash of ideas
coalesced in me, came into focus. The ideas triggered
something, a thought. I realized something. I changed my
mind.

I cannot visit southern Kansas without looking for
Sandra. I do not consciously look for her. Quite
unconsciously, I do. It's only when I realize that I'm
looking for her that it becomes conscious. Like now. A
maturing man in a blue blazer sits down with a younger woman.
The younger woman wears long black hair. I look again.
Sandra? But it isn't. Every time I see black hair cut to
shoulder length I look again. And every time I think it is
Sandra. But every time I am fortunately mistaken. For
though I look, I look with trepidation. I do not want to see
Sandra. I do not want to face Sandra. I cannot face that
sudden quandary of whether to speak. Would I speak? What
would speech bring? Would she speak? What might we say? I
do not want to know.

Click. Click. Click. And the counterguy beats then at
the espresso machine. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. A man in a
cowboy hat waits devoutly.

I fell asleep that night to my soul flexing. I felt its
edginess at, its eagerness for, its begging the challenge of
the trip. This the fruit of my afternoon reading, or really
the ideas that had interrupted my afternoon reading. In the
park I reclined, Atlas Shrugged open before me, the ideas
efflorescent: If one believes in an energy, as I do, in a
law, in an order that undergirds everything. If one believes
that there is something unexplainably in-concrete out of
which all things concrete resolve, as I do. If one believes,
as I do, there is an underlying explanation for the
consistency, the concinnity, the harmony of things, why would
one fear anything? I mean, to believe in a kind of all-
pervading, all-undergirding, all-underlying energy seems to
make everything else--evil, accident, natural disaster--
irrelevant. For if the energy truly undergirds everything
then accident, too, comes from the energy, disaster, too,
from the order, even evil. They all play a role. And so, as
I examined my own belief, as I reclined there in the sun
trying to come into consistency with my own belief, I decided
that if I accepted the existence of this order, of this law,
of this energy, I had to admit that there was nothing that
could contradict it. Nothing. For everything plays a part in
it. And my thoughtstream dammed there. And a supper of
baked pork chops was consumed. And my readings stalled. The
uncontradictable. The irrefragable. A bog. I found myself
slumped in the motor home, not reading the teachings of the
Buddha, stumped as to where to take the thought.

A beautiful girl, but dour. She in denim overwear and a
blue workshirt. She just wandered through, attentive to the
paintings hung. More people around now. Music new age now--
boneless. By accident I picked a great table, round. The
lamplight falls just right. Gray day.

So accident, so natural disaster, so evil are not to be
feared! If I really believe in the undergirding energy and
order and law I have to believe that. And so, suddenly, I
believed that. My fears evaporated. I relived suddenly my
realization that the mystery of genius existed. I saw
suddenly the trajectory of my life that had led me to that
realization. And then I saw the trajectory of my life since
that moment. This journey is the next obvious step. This
mystery is a question I must engage. Seeing this made me
fearless in a way I have never before felt fearless. With
that fearlessness I could leave behind the Winnebago. For I
had been terrified of whipping that lame horse through
Mexico. That was why I was to whip it through Mexico--to
overcome that terror. I was no longer terrified, you know.
So I could leave the Winnebago behind. I could shelter it in
some corral somewhere. I could find alternate means of
travel. I could abandon my Rocinante.

These were my sudden thoughts over the Dhammapada. They
came flushed with adrenaline, with eager strength, with
decisiveness. A guide book I saw clearly in my mind then.
An itinerary, I would plan. I would test the possibility of
making the trip on the money I had. Sixty days. Yes. I
would shorten the trip from ninety to sixty days. At twenty
dollars a day I might manage that. But first--say nothing,
nothing to anyone. Not to my mother. Not to my sister.
Sleep on it. Decide in the morning.

But the decision was made. I slept fitfully that night.
And the next. And the following morning I explained to my
mother's surprised eyes my train of thoughts. Since then
I've spent two days on a lengthy itinerary which plans my
visit to twenty-three cities in fifty-six days at eleven-
hundred dollars. I will take one large green travel bag, a
thousand sheets of loose leaf paper, and Shakespeare, just
Shakespeare. Today is Super Bowl Sunday. Tomorrow I drive
the Winnebago back to Junction City to park it in my
grandmother's backyard. The next day I will leave for Ft.
Worth to visit my sister and my nieces. From there, February
first, I will leave for San Antonio. San Antonio is where
this journey will begin. Or really, I guess I should say, it
is where this journey continues.